Multilateral Aid Review summary - International Labour Organisation (ILO)

The ILO is the international organisation responsible for drawing up and overseeing international labour standards. It is the only 'tripartite' United Nations agency that brings together representatives of governments, employers and workers to jointly shape policies and programmes. The ILO claims to contribute to all MDGs but focuses on MDG1 (poverty reduction).

	comment
Contribution to UK development objectives	Weak
	+	The ILO’s valuable research and analytical capacity in the area of employment with decent work has resulted in the specific integration of employment issues within MDG 1.
	_	The ILO needs to increase its technical capability and expand its activities at the country level to fully implement its policy objectives.
	_	ILO is not critical to efforts to meet the MDGs. No clear evidence that the scale of ILO operations is sufficient to leverage significant impact on the MDGs or on global economic growth.
	_	Contribution to the UK government’s priorities is limited by enduring delivery constraints.
	_	The ILO works in a number of fragile states.  However, this is not a focus area for them.
	+	The ILO appears to have an increasing grip on gender issues and has a credible process in place to ensure further improvements.
	_	There remains limited evidence of tangible gender results being achieved on the ground so far.
Organisational strengths	Unsatisfactory
	_	ILO needs to restructure and improve its internal processes to enable it to deliver more effectively on the ground.
	_	Cost control in the ILO is weak and while there is some limited evidence of central efficiency saving efforts, this does not seem to have filtered down to the project and country level.
	+	The ILO’s tripartite structure and programme approach supports good partnership behaviour.
	+	Clear mandate and good line of sight to strategy and implementation plans.
	_	Beneficiary voice needs to be incorporated into policy making and programme design.
	_	The ILO is striving to improve its strategic and performance management, but from a relatively low baseline and it is too early to assess the impact of recent improvements.
	_	Some good practice on transparency and accountability, such as a clear disclosure policy, but insufficient data available in the public domain on expenditure and results.
Capacity for positive change	Uncertain
	_	The broad focus of the ILO and its complex governance structure currently combine to make rapid and substantive change highly unlikely.